Author: Ram Kumar

Dr Vivek Tewary, Assistant Professor of Mathematics, SIAS, Krea University, and Sayantan Datta, Assistant Professor of Practice, Centre for Writing and Pedagogy (CWP) at Krea University won The Ashoka-Sage Prize for Critical Writing at the Critical Writing Pedagogies Symposium held at Ashoka University on 6-7 April, 2024, for their paper presentation titled Form and Formula – Reflections on Teaching Technical & Journalistic Writing in Mathematics. 

In this paper, Dr Vivek Tewary and Sayantan Datta draw upon their experience of teaching the Writing and Communication in Mathematics course at Krea University to design a possible framework for writing courses in Mathematics. The course taught math writing in technical and journalistic registers. To read research articles in mathematics, we make use of writing pedagogy techniques developed at the Centre for Writing and Pedagogy at Krea and find that these are in resonance with how expert mathematicians read mathematics. We also juxtapose the technical and journalistic registers to highlight the aims, concerns and disciplinary contours of the two styles of writing.

The two-day Critical Writing Pedagogies Symposium was organised by the Undergraduate Writing Programme (UWP) at Ashoka University, in partnership with Sage, to “explore writing pedagogies and how these can deepen the thinking of students in higher education.” 

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Dr Rama Devi, Visiting Assistant Professor, SIAS, Krea University, along with Professor Sawmya Ray, IIT Guwahati, delivered an invited talk titled Not just work, but a respectable work: Caste, Gender, and Employment at the International Conference Celebrating 100 Years of Sociology in India, organised by the University of Hyderabad on 1-3 April, 2024. 

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Sayantan Datta, Assistant Professor of Practice,Centre for Writing and Pedagogy (CWP), Krea University, Neha Mishra, Assistant Professor of Practice, Centre for Writing and Pedagogy (CWP), Krea University and Dr Pushpesh Kumar, Associate Professor; Department of Sociology, University of Hyderabad, co-author a paper titled Queer and trans community building in post-NALSA and post-377 India: a critical reflection, published in the Community Development Journal (Oxford University Press).

In this paper, the authors trace (a) the challenges faced by queer and trans communities and (b) challenges to queer and trans community building in contemporary India by tracing recent developments in the contexts of health, public policy, jurisprudence, social institutions, education, popular culture, and the precarity of gender and sexually transgressive communities during the recent COVID-19 pandemic. They also look at narratives of hope that demonstrate how queer and trans people in post-legal reform India continue to build enabling and affirmative communities in the face of an increasingly neoliberalizing country. This article serves as an introduction to the upcoming special issue of Community Development Journal (Oxford University Press) of the same name, edited by Dr Pushpesh Kumar, Sayantan Datta, and Neha Mishra.

Read the paper here.  

Dr Suchika Chopra, Assistant Professor of Economics, SIAS, Krea University has been chosen for the Junior Scholar Intensive Training (JSIT) program scheduled for June 2024. This program, hosted by the UW-Madison Retirement and Disability Research Center (UW RDRC) and supported by the United States Social Security Administration Retirement and Disability Research Consortium (RDRC), is a weeklong research training initiative. Its purpose is to provide mentored training to 15 scholars who are researching social safety nets, social insurance, and retirement and disability issues. Specifically, Dr Chopra will be working on understanding how state policies such as Medicare and Medicaid protect near-retirement households from the financial risk of healthcare expenses.
Additionally, on 9 February, 2024, Dr Chopra presented her paper titled Understanding the Gender Wealth Gap in Germany: Asset Value vs. Asset Ownership at the Annual Conference on Economics and Finance hosted by BITS Pilani, Hyderabad. This paper documents and investigates the gender wealth disparity among married and cohabiting couples in Germany, highlighting that this disparity stems from both differences in asset ownership at the extensive margin and differences in wealth given asset ownership at the intensive margin. 

A book review by Dr Rama Devi, Visiting Assistant Professor, SIAS, Krea University, titled Book review: Sudha Pai, D. Shyam Babu and Rahul Verma (Ed), Dalits in the New Millenium has been published in the recent issue of the Indian Journal of Human Development. 

 Access the publication here. 

Dr Mitaja Chakraborty, Visiting Assistant Professor, Centre for Writing and Pedagogy (CWP) at Krea University recently delivered presentations at prestigious academic forums. 

Dr Chakraborty presented the paper titled Some methodological concerns: life making and meaning making in the local garment activism spaces in Dhaka at the Workshop on Pluralising Social Reproduction Approaches, organised by the European Council for Political Research & Leuphana University, Lüneburgm on 25–28 March, 2024. 

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At the 64th Indian Society for Labour Economics Conference, organised by the Department of Economics, University of Hyderabad on 29–31 March, 2024, Dr Chakraborty presented the paper titled Networks of care: work, labour and love in Dhaka.

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Dr Chakraborty also delivered an invited talk titled Many lives of Labour: an inquiry into the methods of exploring work at the International Conference on Celebrating 100 years of Sociology in India, organised by the Department of Sociology, University of Hyderabad, on 1-3 April, 2024. 

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Dr Pallavi Pandey, Assistant Professor, HR & OB, and Area Chair – OB & HR, IFMR GSB, Krea University has received the Best Paper Award for her research paper titled Employees Perception Of Work From Home: A Developing Nation Context at the TAPMI International Research Conference on Reimaginging People Management (TIRCRPM), hosted by the TAPMI Institute of Management held on 28 – 30 March, 2024. 

A paper titled ‘It’s nice we can do that too’: investigating transgender persons’ negotiations with identity and community questions in Indian science institutions by Sayantan Datta, Assistant Professor of Practice, Centre for Writing and Pedagogy (CWP) at Krea University has been published in the Community Development Journal (Oxford University Press). 

In this paper, Datta draws upon the lived experiences of four interlocutors to delineate the ways in which proximal and distal networks of caste-class and gender shape transgender, gender non-conforming, and non-binary persons’ exclusion from and belonging in science collectivities. This paper is a part of the upcoming special issue on queer and trans community building in post-377 and post-NALSA India, edited by Pushpesh Kumar, Sayantan Datta, and Neha Mishra.

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